>Your certainty when writing to Glenn seems to contradict what you had said
>previously. If there is no increase in information, then how can the
>possession of an extra copy also confer some advantage not already possessed
>before?
Good point! As Glen and another friend in an off-list post have pointed
out, the formal (i.e. mathematical) definition of information requires an
information increase when you have 15 identical newspapers as opposed to
just one. Thus technically, I suppose, a newspaper stand represents a
great reservoir of untapped information. Sometimes having two copies (or
more) of a gene is advantageous for reasons that are not entirely clear
(tetraploid plants) and sometimes it is not (trisomy 21). Both, however,
are technically increases in information.
Art
http://geology.swau.edu